Review: Assassin's Creed: Unity

Assassin's Creed: Unity

Here we are again.

By Matt Adams

From November 11th to December 11th AC: Unity has been on everyone's radar; but not in the best way possible. The high's and the low's that this game has taken are staggering. From the one-to-one scale model of revolutionary war Paris, to the beautiful next generation graphics, and all the way down to the bottom of the world...No, I'm not kidding: literally falling through it. For every step Unity took forward, it seems to have taken at least one back.

Let us start with Arno, the protagonist, who has everything he could want until some tragic moment stole it away from him. Now he must seek revenge on the one who hurt him. Speak up if you have heard this one before? His character, while appealing to your love of slight sarcasm and dry humor, is fairly shallow. Also this guy is the fastest assassin trainee ever! Or has one of the worst teachers ever, you decide. After just one mission, you are patted on the back and told, "I have nothing more to teach you."

The progression in AC: Unity is better than some, but it is nothing like the original Assassin's Creed when you start at nothing and climb your way to the top. Speaking of progression, if you have a cool $100 laying around you can just go ahead and buy everything in the game because that is a thing. With half the gear being locked behind either a micro-transaction pay wall or a social club sort of experience, or one of Ubisoft's other hoops to jump through sometimes $100 seems like a better option. Now that all that is out of the system, some of the gear is so cool looking, and also along with all different attributes that can be modified per your play style there is actually a plethora of combinations. I chose to be a Musketeer that uses long weapons and prefers a lot of health, but you can change any of that stuff for a very personalized look, including the color you want your outfit to be. This really helps to differentiate the players in online games.

Speaking of online gaming, this is a huge step forward in this game. Different from the competitive multiplayer on Assassin's Creed: Black Flag, AC: Unity is all about co-op missions and heists. Something I hope they will re-fine and add more of in the future with DLC and also continue to apply to new Assassin's Creed games, like the now leaked Assassin's Creed: Victory coming next year. AC: Unity is enjoyable to play online alongside friends while the single player campaign is also quite fun. The single player is rather quite shallow in places with a kind of, "Thanks for doing what you did but it really didn't matter," aspect at the end of it (hopefully something they will learn from in the future.) Some of the new tools that they have added, like the different types of weapons and the ability to parkour down, (even though the controls are not amazing: a little lagy and weighted) do help, but when issues like frame rate drop and disconnections from the server happen, it is pretty difficult to appreciate if you can't play the game. This is especially shown when there are over 1,000 NPCs on screen at a time. With many patches and updates that have helped for frame rate and server issues, AC: Unity still does not come in the game of the year category. An analyst did a study which showed that the frame rate issues have been helped by a miniscule percentage, I believe less than 1%, however, if you're someone who enjoys Assassin's Creed games and are looking for a game for the holidays I highly recommend this game just to further see where the series is headed.

Overall AC: Unity is a good, not great game with a few bugs that will hopefully be fixed soon. AC: Unity will continue to be played by me and my close friends because who gets bored with jumping off roofs and stabbing people in the head... I mean really!?